Suboxone Product Hop Antitrust Litigation

Court: United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Leadership Position: Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel

On March 26, 2013, Wexler Wallace LLP and its co-counsel filed a case on behalf of a class of end payors against Reckitt Benckiser for allegedly engaging in an anticompetitive scheme to exclude generic competition for its opiate treatment drug, Suboxone. Plaintiffs allege that approximately two years before generic competition for the Suboxone tablet was slated to begin, Reckitt began developing a different Suboxone formulation—an oral film—with the intention of destroying the market that existed for its original tablet product before generic competition could set in. Plaintiffs further allege that Reckitt filed sham citizen petitions with the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to sabotage the FDA’s Abbreviated New Drug Application process for approving generic alternatives in order further delay generic entry and buy time to convert consumers from the tablet to the film. The complaint alleges that, absent Reckitt’s conduct, much cheaper generic versions of Suboxone would have been available to consumers almost four years earlier.